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Blind Recruitment Trial to Boost Gender Equality is Making Things Worse

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 10 2017, @09:09PM   
from the doing-science dept.

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A measure aimed at boosting female employment in the workforce may actually be making it worse, a major study has found.

Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials, which many believed would increase the number of women in senior positions. Blind recruitment means recruiters cannot tell the gender of candidates because those details are removed from applications. It is seen as an alternative to gender quotas and has also been embraced by Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Victoria Police and Westpac Bank.

In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs. The assumption behind the trial is that management will hire more women when they can only consider the professional merits of candidates. Their choices have been monitored by behavioural economists in the Prime Minister's department — colloquially known as "the nudge unit".

Professor Michael Hiscox, a Harvard academic who oversaw the trial, said he was shocked by the results and has urged caution. "We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist," he said. "We found the opposite, that de-identifying candidates reduced the likelihood of women being selected for the shortlist."

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Original Submission

• Google also tried to enforce blindness (Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Friday August 11 2017, @01:25AM

  by kaszz (4211) on Friday August 11 2017, @01:25AM (#552005) Journal

  In case anyone forgot:
  Google fires author of divisive memo on gender differences [soylentnews.org]
  And the memo [diversitymemo.com]..

  The beta report from this Australian study BETA-report-going-blind-to-see-more clearly.pdf [pmc.gov.au]

  Found some interesting conclusions in the document:

  We found that the public servants engaged in positive (not negative) discrimination towards female and minority
  candidates:
    • Participants were 2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable, compared with when they were de-identified.
    • Minority males were 5.8% more likely to be shortlisted and minority females were 8.6% more likely to be shortlisted when identifiable compared to when applications were de-identified.
    • The positive discrimination was strongest for Indigenous female candidates who were 22.2% more likely to be
  shortlisted when identifiable compared to when the applications were de-identified.

  Interestingly, male reviewers displayed markedly more positive discrimination in favour of minority candidates than
  did female counterparts, and reviewers aged 40+ displayed much stronger affirmative action in favour for both
  women and minorities than did younger ones.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+2
  Informative=2, Total=2
  Extra 'Informative' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		4